Why You Should Care About Workflow Automation

The majority of companies in the world now rely on software-as-a-service; cloud-based apps like Salesforce, Google Apps and Zendesk, also known as SaaS.

In 2013 Forbes reported over 50% of businesses use cloud computing, which has risen to 77% as of May 2015. As SaaS gains popularity, companies are finding innovative ways to integrate apps and automate as much as possible, leaving businesses more time to spend on strategies requiring human input instead of repetitive admin work.

Connecting apps to automate workflows is becoming increasingly more important as companies move away from Outlook and Excel to cloud-based SaaS apps. A major benefit of using SaaS is that apps have the ability to talk to each other via APIs and automatically trigger different functions and events between apps.

Workflow automation is a great way to improve efficiency and reduce human error as near-instant triggers take data straight from app 1 and feed it into app 2.

This leaves no room for mistakes and can save your company significant amounts of money in the long run.

Download our FREE 111 Page Ebook on Workflow Automation

We’ve created the perfect resource to get you saving time and money by automating your business’ processes.

From basic tasks such as saving Gmail attachments into Dropbox to shipping your Salesforce leads into MailChimp, the Ultimate Guide will guide you through setting up the perfect Zaps to automatically handle the tasks that clog up your schedule.

Plus, with Zapier’s 1,000+ integrated apps, chances are that your favorite programs are just waiting to be linked!

50 Process Street Integrations for Workflow Automation

I’m bringing you the results of much deep thinking, fiddling, app-authorizing and testing: The Process Street Zapbook, containing Process Street integrations we think you’ll get the most use out of.

While these examples might be exactly what you’re looking for, Zapier also offers the option to create your own integration (or “Zap”) from scratch, so you can add a brand new one or customize one of ours.

Take a flick through the chapters of our Zapbook.

A few thoughts before you start

Firstly, the below list is comprised of integrations between various apps and our own product “Process Street“, a simple process and workflow management app. You can learn more about Process Street here or on our help site. If you want to see other Zapier integrations take a look at their Zap directory here.

In Process Street, checking off a task doesn’t just mean it’s marked as complete. It can trigger actions in other apps, too. The same goes for comments. How about updating the customer’s status in your CRM when the last task of your onboarding checklist is checked off or automatically creating Calendar events from comments?

The beauty of Zapier is that you can make automation as simple or as complicated as you like. An example:

A new user on Intercom triggers Zapier to create a Process Street checklist from the New User Onboarding template, with the name of the new user as the checklist title.

When you comment a date and time in the ‘arrange a call’ task comment box, Google Calendar automatically adds an event entitled ‘Call with (checklist title/user’s name)’ at the time and date specified in the comments.

You could take it further by triggering a new checklist afterwards for onboarding calls — the sky’s the limit with workflow automation. What’s important is that you can now do as much or as little as you like manually. There’s no need to spend your time on mundane admin work.

Here are some examples how sales teams can get use Process Street integrations as a way to trigger their tasks, not just track them.

Salesforce

The biggest CRM in the world just got bigger. Integrating Salesforce with Process Street is simple with Zapier. Keep Salesforce automatically updated with Process Street activity, or use Salesforce as a way to trigger checklists that will help you close deals.

Close.io

Close.io already cuts a lot of tedious work by keeping automated logs, so integrating it with Zapier takes that even further. Use Close.io as the trigger for your sales workflows in Process Street to track your funnel in more detail.

Google Calendar

Google can scrape details like times and dates from Process Street comments and slot them into your Google Calendar to automatically arrange meetings with clients, schedule follow up calls and more.

PayPal

Integration with PayPal means you can automate workflows for lost sales and coordinate your team to rescue the customer.

Pipedrive

CRM and pipeline management software Pipedrive just got even more powerful. Linking it with Process Street allows sales teams to run microprocesses and keep track of it all from the Process Street dashboard, as well as updating Pipedrive with data from Process Street.

Client onboarding, one of the most popular uses of Process Street, has just become amazingly simple. By integrating Process Street with Help Scout, Stripe, Wufoo, Intercom, Typeform and PayPal, checklists can be automatically created and assigned when the customer success process starts, making it easy to track and making sure your team can focus on the customer, not what to do next.

Help Scout

Whether you use this as a way to train new employees how to deal with tickets, or to make sure you’re providing the best possible service, integrating Process Street with Help Scout is a way to go deeper with customer success and use recurring workflows to track your progress.

Intercom

Set this Intercom and Process Street integration to watch the last task in your onboarding process so the customer’s status will be automatically updated. If you control tagging with Process Street, you’ll always know where your customers stand and be able to see the process your team has gone through.

PayPal

The moment sales ends, customer success can be there to step in. Run your new customer onboarding checklist inside Process Street and never miss a chance to quickly reach out.

Stripe

Ensure customer success and track your team’s progress through the onboarding procedure from the Process Street dashboard. Integrating Stripe with Zapier, you can run checklists pre-formatted with data taken from Stripe, like amount and payee.

Typeform

If you follow a process to follow up with customers returning NPS questionnaires or general feedback, this Typeform and Process Street integration will help streamline the process by linking the two together.

Wufoo

By integrating Process Street with Wufoo you’re able store checklist data in forms or trigger workflows to track customer success teams as they deal with feedback.

Linking Process Street with project management tools is one of the most powerful uses because it combines the microprocesses with the big picture tasks, providing processes and reporting the results of everything a team does to a main hub like Basecamp or Trello.

Asana

Integrate Process Street with Asana to share tasks, comments and attachments between the two apps as well as trigger Process Street checklists automatically.

Basecamp

Add a new level of depth to your Basecamp projects with Process Street checklists. Basecamp can act as a notification hub, gathering information from Process Street and posting it as messages on Basecamp to cut down the amount of time you team spends splitting their attention between different apps.

Teamwork

Teamwork‘s powerful suite of apps (Desk, Projects and Chat) now integrate with Process Street to trigger workflows and post notifications in your team communication channels.

Trello

Use Trello as a trigger to create new Process Street checklists, or create cards in Trello to report checklist activity to your team. Process Street’s dashboard gives you a quick overview of your processes and lets you see who is assigned to what, increasing employee engagement and accountability.

Content marketers can now link Process Street to tools for writing and promotion like Buffer and Evernote to automate foolproof workflows and streamline their efforts.

Buffer

Content curators rejoice! Links inside your content curation processes can now be automatically sent to your social media channels with this Process Street and Buffer integration.

Evernote

By integrating Process Street with Evernote you can trigger a content writing workflow to help turn your rough ideas (drafted down in Evernote) into great articles.

MailChimp

Run your MailChimp email campaigns through a foolproof checklist to catch any errors, make sure the campaign is being sent to the right groups, and give final approval for delivery.

RSS

Content promotion teams can now use automatically triggered and assigned workflows every time an RSS feed is updated. If you have a content promotion process, set it up to run each time there’s a new post on your blog.

Twitter

Keep track of outreach by running a new process whenever you’re the topic of conversation on Twitter. The idea is to set up a reminder to thank those who shared your content and do the same back from them. An example checklist could be 1. Thank the sharer, 2. Favorite a tweet of theirs, 3. Follow them, etc.

Dealing with recurring HR processes, like employee onboarding and offboarding, is a necessity but doesn’t need to be tedious. Automate the repetitive tasks in your day-to-day workflow with Process Street integrations with Breezy HR and People HR. These Zaps would link perfectly to your standard operating procedures for watertight on and offboarding.

Breezy HR

Breezy HR‘s employee onboarding functionality is much more effective when enhanced with Process Street checklists. Run an employee onboarding or screening process and assign it to those with the skills to get the job done.

People HR

People HR makes it easy to keep track of employee leave and time at work, making it powerful when combined with Process Street’s employee offboarding or new hire checklists.

Directing your notifications to a Slack channel, whether dedicated or a team room, is a way to reduce the amount of places you need to check up on throughout the day. At Process Street we feed the comments and checked tasks from our content promotion checklists to a the main content marketing room so our members have an insight into everything as it happens.

Slack

Slack integrated with Process Street can act a notification center, directing all in-app checklist activity to a central hub and keeping everyone in the loop.

If you’re dealing with contracts, invoices, or any kind of document, copying them into a shared Dropbox or Google Drive folder keeps everyone up to speed.

Dropbox

Create a separate, shared archive of Process Street attachments and access them on desktop, Android or iOS with the Dropbox app.

Google Drive

Google Drive isn’t just a place to store Process Street attachments, you can also import documents in a format ready to be edited inside the app, meaning no more downloads clogging your hard drive. Check out more Google Drive tips here.

Box

We also integrate Process Street with Box, because we haven’t forgotten about you Box fans! Automatically copy all Process Street attachments to a specified Box location with this integration.

OneDrive

Take copies of all Process Street attachments with you wherever you go with this Process Street-OneDrive integration. Whenever a file is added to a Process Street checklist, Zapier automatically adds a copy to OneDrive.

These Zaps aren’t exclusive to particular teams but are sure to make someone’s time at work a heck of a lot easier.

Ronin

For teams with outsourced members, managing multiple invoices through Ronin can be tracked through Process Street checklists, to review work and ensure the invoice is processed on time.

Email

Creating databases from Process Street activity can be used to create a searchable database of comments and checklist titles, while Zapier’s email parser can scrape data from emails and populate checklists with that data, like the email body, subject, the ‘to’ field, and more.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is insanely powerful for creating databases by scraping information from around the web. Try feeding activity to one searchable sheet for keeping track of all your team’s work.

RSS

For teams that don’t use Slack, Hipchat or any kind of enterprise chat app, fear not. You can still keep your notifications from different places together by adding them to a dedicated RSS feed and using something like Feedly to catch up.

Make your own Process Street integrations

We’ve not covered everything here. I mean, if we had, this post would have thousands of Process Street integrations. There’s a good chance you’ll want to play around with other integrations, and you definitely should.

Zapier has both free and paid plans starting at $20/user/month, so if you’re serious about putting your apps to work for you, start your free trial here.

Don’t forget to Download our FREE 111 Page Ebook

We’ve created the perfect resource to get you saving time and money by automating your business’ processes.

From basic tasks such as saving Gmail attachments into Dropbox to shipping your Salesforce leads into Mailchimp, the Ultimate Guide will guide you through setting up the perfect Zaps to automatically handle the tasks that clog up your schedule.

Plus, with Zapier’s 1,000+ integrated apps, chances are that your favorite programs are just waiting to be linked!

Thank you for the article. I guess I didn’t realize how workflow automation worked or really what it meant. The cloud is everywhere nowadays and if you don’t upgrade your business, you’ll lose it. I really enjoy the simplicity of the software services as well. It makes “work flow”. Thanks again!

The jump to cloud computing in the last five years has been incredible. There are so many SaaS companies out there that help with process automation and data analytics. It is interesting that you bring up Slack as a great tool for communicating. I know that Slack has been extremely popular in startups, but I have yet to use it. After reading this, I think I will implement some of these ideas, like using Slack.